Discovering I Was Just My Savior Husband's Grooming Game, I Divorced Him

Everyone knew George Stephens was my knight, and I was the Cinderella he'd rescued.

He took in the gloom I carried from my childhood in the orphanage, and healed the wounds left by the bullying I went through as a teenager.

Even after I lost my uterus in an accidental miscarriage, he kissed my forehead and told me it wasn't my fault.

Then, on our third wedding anniversary, I opened George's computer to look for some old photos.

Instead I clicked into a folder called Grooming Odie.

I could easily have saved her parents, but an orphan needs her knight so much more.

Paying off those thugs to bully her cost a fortune, but the way she trembled in my arms was beautiful.

I don't regret switching her prenatal medication. As long as Odie loves only me, that's enough.

The last entry was updated yesterday::

I think I'm sick of being the knight. Saving her used to feel like an accomplishment. Now this wretched state of hers just grates on me.

So all this time he'd been feeding his knight fantasy on my wounds.

And once the novelty wore off, all I had left was a weakness too heavy to carry me out the door.

I cried until I couldn't stand, but I still stumbled toward the door, dragging my suitcase.

The moment I stepped out, I saw George pinning my best friend against the wall, his voice rough.:

When am I finally going to be able to tell her we're already together?

...

The suitcase slammed into the doorframe, and both their heads turned at once.

Miriam Hughes went white in an instant and shoved George away.

George froze for a second, his eyes landing on my thin nightdress.

He took off his coat and draped it over my shoulders, the way he always had.

You'll catch cold.

I knocked his hand away, my voice breaking.

How long have you two been together?

Miriam's mouth opened, her voice shaking.

Odie, listen to me

George stepped forward and put himself between us, shielding her.

I'm the one who went after Miri first.

Miriam peeked out from behind him, her eyes red.

I haven't said yes to him yet! I told him the two of you had to divorce first before I'd ever be with him!

George looked at my reddened eyes and let out a sigh.

Well, since you already know, maybe that's for the best.

Keeping it hidden was wearing all three of us out.

As he spoke, he bent down to fasten the buttons of the coat for me.

The year I was seven, my parents had just died.

I was sent to the orphanage, and on that first winter night, I locked myself in the storage room.

George lay outside that door all night.

Every ten minutes, he knocked three times.

Odie, just answer me.

You don't have to come out. Just let me know you're still there.

Later I refused to eat for days on end.

He went and found the old workers from my parents' breakfast shop, and learned how to make sweet hot chocolate.

He burned three pots of it, and scalded a big patch of blisters onto his hand.

Back then I thought no one in this world could ever love me more than he did.

Now he bent his head, still patiently fastening my buttons.

For one moment I actually doubted myself, wondering if the things on that computer could have just been some sick joke.

Clinging to that last shred of hope, I looked at Miriam.

Did the two of you hug?

Miriam bit her lip and lowered her head.

Did you kiss?

Her shoulders began to shake.

Have you already slept together behind my back, more times than you can count?

Miriam didn't deny it.

George frowned.

Enough. Don't humiliate her like this.

In twenty years, it was the first time he'd ever spoken to me in that tone.

I looked at George.

Weren't you so afraid of upsetting your sick little patient? Then why go and be with my best friend?

George turned his face away.

Odie, I've taken care of you for twenty years.

I wanted to try what it feels like not to build my whole life around an invalid.

The room went quiet for a few seconds.

George realized what he'd just said and immediately tried to move closer to me.

Then Miriam suddenly started to cry.

His step faltered, and on instinct he turned first to steady her.

Watching that, my tears stopped instead.

He pushed my suitcase back into the house.

I was going to bring up the divorce after we got through this anniversary.

Since you've walked in on it now, there's no point pretending anymore.

But you're not well. There's no way I'm letting you go out alone tonight.

I didn't look at Miriam again.

I stared at George and asked the one question I was most afraid to ask.

Fine, we'll divorce. But before we do, you answer me one thing.

The night my parents died, what exactly did you do?

George's hand tightened hard around Miriam's.

He stared at me, his voice a little hoarse.

"Where did you dig up all this nonsense? Your parents have been dead for twenty years!"

"You're not well right now. Stop dredging up the past and torturing yourself with it."

I stepped forward and grabbed him by the collar.

"All you have to tell me is this. That night, what exactly did you do?"

George's hand shot up and seized my wrist, gripping hard.

"Your house caught fire. I ran into the flames and carried you out on my back."

"Have you forgotten how much smoke I breathed in, how long I lay in that hospital? And now you come at me like this?"

I snatched the family photo off the cabinet and smashed it against the wall. Glass shattered across the floor.

"Odie!"

George crouched down and reached for me.

I shoved him away and knelt on the floor, digging through the wreckage for my parents' photo.

The broken glass cut my fingers, and blood dripped onto the picture.

His face darkened. He caught my hand and pressed a handkerchief to the wound.

"Are you insane? Just stop hurting yourself, all right?"

Miriam stood a few steps away, her face ghostly pale.

"George, tell the truth."

"If Odie's got it wrong, explain it to her."

George kept his head down, bandaging my hand, and said nothing.

I thought of every anniversary of my parents' deaths, how he got up before dawn.

Sweet hot chocolate, a savory scallion pancake. Never once forgotten.

One year a storm broke over the cemetery. I collapsed with a fever, and he carried me down the hill on his back.

He sat with me all night in the emergency room, then went back alone the next day to gather up the offerings the rain had scattered, piece by piece.

I used to take all of it for love.

Now all I wanted to know was what he had really been thinking, kneeling beside me at my parents' graves.

Miriam came over and tried to help me up.

Her sleeve slid back, baring the burn scar on her forearm.

Back at the orphanage, when someone came at me with a kettle of scalding water, she was the one who threw herself in front of me.

Once, when her appendix ruptured, I sold the silver locket my parents had left me to pay her medical bills.

Later a family was willing to take me in but wouldn't take her, and I chose to stay too.

We'd promised each other then. Neither of us would ever leave the other behind.

I pulled away from her hand, and Miriam froze where she stood.

George looked at the blood on the floor and finally spoke.

"Yes. That night, I was right outside the back door of your parents' breakfast shop."

Miriam's head jerked up.

But I couldn't hear anything at all anymore.

"I smelled the gas, strong. I used the spare key you gave me and opened the door."

"Your parents were on the kitchen floor. They were already unconscious, but they were still breathing."

"I meant to run to the corner and get help."

George bowed his head, unable to look at me.

"But then I remembered. That afternoon your parents had told you they were moving you to another city and forbidding you to see me again."

"I thought, if they were gone, you wouldn't leave."

"So I took that spare key, walked to the mouth of the alley, sat down on the steps, and waited twenty-six minutes."

"In the end I still called for an ambulance."

"But by the time it came, they'd already stopped breathing."

I slapped him across the face.

I yanked at his hair, clawed at his neck.

"Why didn't you get help? Why didn't you save them? You animal!"

I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe.

George didn't dodge. He let me hit him.

In the end he crushed me against his chest, holding me tight so I wouldn't fall onto the glass.

"I was only eleven! I was just a kid!"

"I had no idea what twenty-six minutes meant for a person's life!"

"For twenty years I gave you everything I had, just to make up for that one mistake!"

I bit down on his shoulder and tasted blood.

"What makes you think twenty years of making it up to me is worth my parents' lives? Why didn't you tell me the truth?"

His eyes were red, his voice trembling.

"If I'd told you, you'd never have spoken to me again. And I couldn't stand you looking at me like I was your enemy."

Miriam, who had stayed silent all this time, suddenly spoke.

"George is all of this true?"

George didn't answer.

Miriam didn't try to make excuses for him. But where she thought I couldn't see, she quietly took his hand.

That night, I sat in the wrecked living room with the mess still spread across the floor.

George sat on the couch. Miriam sat at the dining table.

At first light, I stood up.

"The divorce lawyer I hired will come this afternoon."

I walked to the kitchen and poured out every drop of the hot chocolate he'd made the day before, straight into the sink.

"Those years, the people who tormented me. Did you pay them to do it?"

George's hand froze mid-pour, and water spilled across the counter.

"Yes. But when I gave them the money, I made it clear. They could freeze you out, that's all. They were never supposed to lay a hand on you!"

I laughed.

Ink poured over my clothes, my things thrown into the toilet. That was what he called not laying a hand on me.

I thought about that winter.

I'd been locked in the equipment room.

When I was half-conscious from the cold, it was George who smashed the lock open.

"The day you broke that lock, you were already standing right outside, weren't you?"

His throat worked.

"I was nearby the whole time. Those few changed their minds at the last minute. They didn't do what I told them to."

"I ran to get tools, and because of that you were stuck freezing in there two extra hours."

"And when someone shoved you down the stairs, I was the one who carried you to the hospital! I made sure those people got what they deserved!"

"Odie, I never wanted you to get hurt!"

He set the fire himself, put it out himself, and still wanted me grateful to him.

The sliding door slid open. Miriam stood in the doorway.

"You paid people to bully her, back then?!"

The night I was locked in the equipment room, Miriam had actually climbed over the wall to sit with me.

The next day she beat up the girl who'd led it. The scar from where her knee split open is still there now.

Miriam, who once fought like her life depended on it just because someone insulted me.

And now she took a share of my love without a flicker of guilt.

I ignored her shock and kept my eyes on George.

"This one I'll let go."

I yanked open a drawer and slammed a box of prenatal medication down in front of him.

"What about this? Did you swap this out on me?"

The color drained from his face.

"The doctor told me quietly. Your body was never fit to carry a pregnancy to term!"

"But I knew how badly you wanted a child. I couldn't bring myself to tell you to your face!"

I looked at him, cold.

"So you switched my medication?"

He shot to his feet.

"I only wanted the embryo to stop developing on its own!"

"How was I supposed to know it would trigger a hemorrhage? I never imagined they'd have to take out your uterus!"

I pressed in, step by step.

"You were afraid that if I had the baby, there'd be even less chance of you being with Miriam. Isn't that right?"

George couldn't get out a single word in his defense.

Beside him, Miriam's face changed too. Eyes red, she came to pull at me.

"Odie, I swear, I didn't know he'd go to such extremes. I thought"

I sneered and dodged her hand.

"Don't touch me, Miriam. How much longer are you going to keep up the act?"

I took out a voice recorder and pressed play.

It was Miriam's voice, laced with deliberate hurt and testing:

"George, Odie's pregnant. What are we going to do now? I don't want to be the one who breaks up someone's family."

"If she has the baby, I really won't be able to face her. Maybe we should just forget it."

Then came George's voice, urgent:

"That won't happen, Miri. Trust me. I'll take care of it cleanly."

When the recording ended, George stood frozen where he was.

Miriam's tears fell. She turned to look at him.

"Let's spend some time apart first. We all need to cool down."

Hearing that, George seized her wrist hard.

"You promised me yesterday! You said you'd never leave me on my own again!"

I watched the two of them and calmly slid the diamond ring off my finger.

I dropped it into the trash can beside me.

George's face twisted.

"Odette! Then what do you want? For me to pay with my life?"

"You've been unstable ever since you lost your uterus!"

"I put up with you for three years! Crying in the middle of the night, smashing things, refusing to see anyone!"

"Anyone else would've been done with you long ago! I've carried you this far, you should be grateful!"

I was about to speak when Miriam suddenly cried out.

She clutched her stomach in pain, curling in on herself.

"George... my stomach... it hurts so much..."

The rage that had been aimed at me a second ago drained from George's eyes, replaced by panic.

He shoved me aside.

"Move!"

My shoulder slammed into the sharp corner of the doorframe, and the pain shot through me.

George didn't spare me a single glance.

He scooped Miriam up without hesitation and rushed out the door.

The whole place was a wreck, and I was the only one left.

Then a sharp pain tore through my lower belly.

I pressed my hand to it, cold sweat soaking through my nightgown in an instant.

I picked up my phone and realized there was no one to call.

In the end, I dragged myself down the stairs along the wall, hailed a cab, and went straight to the ER.

The doctor held the test results, his expression grave.

"Miss Fox, the labor induction you had three years ago came back with abnormal pathology afterward. Did your doctor tell you to come in for regular follow-ups?"

I thought back carefully.

"No. My husband said I'd recovered well."

The doctor looked at me, hesitating, silent for a long while before he spoke.

"The cervical lesion has already progressed. The tumor has metastasized in several places."

"It's very bad, Miss Fox. You have a month left, at most."

The terminal diagnosis was so light.

Yet holding it, I couldn't even lift my wrist.

Twenty years of protection, twenty years of dependence, twenty years of obsession.

In the end, it hadn't even left me time for revenge.

I leaned against the wall and walked out of the ER in a daze.

At the end of the hallway was the VIP room, its door half open.

I heard a nurse say, smiling:

"Congratulations, Mr. Stephens. Miss Hughes just had a stomach spasm from early pregnancy. The baby's developing beautifully."

George's eyes were red as he knelt by the bed and kissed Miriam's belly.

"Miri, thank you for giving me a child."

The word child brought me back to right after my labor induction.

George had told me he didn't care about a child at all. As long as he had me, that was enough.

Miriam suddenly saw me standing outside the door, and her face went white.

"Odie!"

George whipped around.

He saw the test results in my hand, and his first reaction wasn't to ask what was wrong with me.

It was to charge out the door and block me from the room.

"Odette, what are you doing here?"

"I'm warning you, Miri is pregnant."

"Whatever grudge you have, take it out on me. Don't touch her or the baby."

Looking at his face, I felt he was a complete stranger.

Slowly, I raised the terminal diagnosis in my hand.

Right in front of him.

I put it in my mouth, chewed it to pieces, and swallowed.

Then I turned and left the hospital.

Back home, I signed the divorce papers.

Then I booked the next flight out of the country.

Before boarding, my phone wouldn't stop ringing.

George had sent more than a dozen messages.

"Where are you going? We can talk about the divorce, but you can't just disappear."

"The doctor says Miri needs rest, so I won't be home tonight."

"There's food in the fridge. Remember to heat it up before you eat."

The last one read:

"Odie, stop this. I'm not really going to abandon you."

I pulled out the SIM card and snapped it in two.

I dragged my suitcase into the jet bridge and didn't look back.